As you might already know, it’s not uncommon for your ex to say that you guys can still be “friends when they’re breaking up with you. It’s almost like giving you the option of staying friends is an obligation that they feel they owe you so they can feel like they were considerate of your feelings.

But if they were really considerate of your feelings… they wouldn’t be friends with you. See, a lot of times we think that staying friends will make the break up easier on us because then we can slowly fade out of each other’s lives and still have them around for support when we need it.

But in reality, staying friends after a break up only makes things worse. In fact, it’s probably one of the biggest mistakes that I see guys make after a break up, aside from trying to get their ex back. And ironically, it’s usually just their desire to get her back disguised as wanting to be friends.

At first, they fight feverishly to try to get her back and when that doesn’t work, they settle for friendship and decide to stick around as a friend, hoping that one day things will change. While many may think this approach is clever and coy, women can usually tell when you’re secretly yearning for something more. But if you’re really serious about being friends with your ex, ask yourself this:

Are You Really Prepared to Be Treated Like a Friend?

What a lot of people tend to forget is that if you try to stay friends with your ex…

Reason #1 =She’ll Start Treating You Differently & Force You into the Role of a Friend

When the break up is still fresh, there’s going to be a part of you that’s expecting her to act the same way towards you. And when she doesn’t, you’re going to get upset that she doesn’t feel the same way anymore. The reason for this is because the part of you that’s seen her as your girlfriend all this time doesn’t really care about this new title change. So when you’re hanging out with her, there’s going to be an inner battle going on inside of you between the part of you that’s pretending that it’s cool be friends and the part of you that still loves her and cares about her.

Reason #2 = You’ll Have to Constantly Push Down & Suppress Your Feelings Around Her

When you guys are talking or hanging out, she’s probably going to do something that reminds of you of why you liked her in the first place; whether it’s her little ways of talking or a thing she gets about you that nobody else does. But before you have the time to enjoy it, it’ll be replaced by the feeling of frustration that she’s no longer yours.

Reason #3 = Seeing Her But Not Having Her is Going to Hurt

Being around her as a friend is only going to reinforce the painful fact that she doesn’t see you the same way anymore. You’re going to be living with the constant reminder that certain things are now “off limits.” You won’t be able to say or do anything remotely sexual with her and you can’t be affectionate or do any of the other things you guys used to do when you were together.

You’re going to want to hang out with her and do things together like you used to but she’s going to be trying to create space for new things in her life and dedicating more of her time to her friends, family, dating, and yes other guys. At some point, youre going to ask her to hang out and she’s going to turn you down. Whether you admit it or not, when she starts passing you up to do other stuff… IT WILL BOTHER YOU! You can pretend that it’s cool and try to play it off like it’s no big deal but she’s going to sense that you’re getting emotional about it and it’ll make things weird.

Reason #4 = You’re Going to Be Really Sensitive to Any Talk of “Other Guys”You might already know what I’m talking about here. You and your ex are talking one day and she starts telling you a story that involves a friend. Might be something simple like how she was out with some friends this weekend and so and so happened. She might leave out the details, but in the back of your mind, you’re going to be wondering if any of those friends are guys and whether she’s seeing any of them. Now, you’re probably not going to ask her any of this stuff directly but you’re probably going to be trying to figure it out indirectly. There’s a part of you that’s going to be really tempted to “probe” a little more to try to get some more details to satisfy your curiosity.And if that’s not enough to make the friendship really weird…

Reason #5 = You’ll Be Saying & Doing Things to Try to Get Her Back

When you guys broke up, your ex probably gave you some reason for why she was leaving. Well, when you guys are together, you’re going to be tempted to try to show her that things are different now. you’re going to find yourself saying and doing things to try to prove that you’ve changed and that you got your act together.Now, I dont blame guys for doing this, there’s something really appealing about redeeming yourself in the eyes of the girl you love. The only problem is, that’s not how people act around their friends and she’s going to sense that something’s a little “off”

She may not say anything about it and she may not even acknowledge it herself but she will FEEL you wanting her approval.If there’s anything I’ve learned over the past few years of studying this whole area of dating and relationships its that girls are far more sensitive to these kinds of subtle dynamics than guys.She will FEEL you being dependant on what she says or does. She will FEEL you reacting to her when she pushes your button. She is going to sense that you still haven’t really let go and moved on.

Reason #6 = You’ll Be Tempted to Misinterpret HerWhen you guys are hanging out or talking, there’s going to be a point where the relationship comes up and she tells you that she misses something about you. This is perfectly normal because the reality is, there’s still a part of her that cares about you, even if she’s the one that left. But the problem is, you’re going to misconstrue what she says and interpret it as a sign that she wants to get back together with you… sort of like wishful thinking.

The truth is that she may still love you and have some feelings for you but she doesnt feel any of those things enough to actually want to be with you. Sure, she might think about you from time to time and feel some nostalgia about how things used to be but there’s also a big list of bad things that have been building up in her mind over a long time, which caused her to break up with you in the first place. So despite what she might say here and there, her reasons for leaving you are still in her head and she’s probably reminding herself of what they are in order to prevent her emotions from getting the best of her.

Reason #7 = You’ll Spend a lot of Time Wondering How She Feels about You

You’ll constantly be reading into every little thing that happens and analyzing what she said so you can try to make sense of whats going on. Every now and then, the relationship talk may come up and you might get an inkling of hope that there’s a chance for you guys to get back together. But eventually, you’re going to realize that you just got your own hopes, which is only going to make
you feel even more frustrated and disappointed when you see that nothing changed.

All of these things are going to add up over time and really start to take a toll on your life. After a while, 1 of 2 things will happen.

Scenario 1: You won’t be able to conceal the fact that you’re still in love with her and she’ll have to cut off contact with you because it’s making things too weird and complicated.

Scenario 2: You’re confronted with the fact that she doesn’t want to be with you over and over again and you finally start to realize that you’re just wasting your time. Eventually, you decide to cut off all contact with your ex because it’s just too hard to be in love with someone who’s clearly moved on.

In both cases, things gets stressed to the point where a normal friendship just isn’t possible and you realize that all the time you spent “trying to be friends” actually made the pain even worse and just ate away at all the time you could’ve spent getting over your ex.

So if staying friends usually does much more harm than good

Why Do We Feel Such a Strong Urge to Stay Friends?

1) Part of the reason is because we often feel like what we had is too special to just throw away
and we feel like we have to keep them around in our life simply out of respect for what we had.

2) But what I think it really boils down to is the fact that its simply too hard for us to let go of someone that was once one of the most important people in our lives.

Just the thought of living your life without them creates this feeling of emptiness inside of you and some people have a hard time even imagining what their life would be like without their ex. And because cutting them out of our lives completely is such a drastic change, we keep them around to make things easier on us.

But unfortunately, we don’t realize that it actually does the complete opposite, which is why I’ve made an effort to hammer down on all the dangers of staying friends after a break up. Most people who try to be friends with their ex are often unaware of all the unnecessary complications involved in staying friends after a break up and don’t really realize what they’re getting themselves into.

My goal here was to give you a glimpse of all the different things that tend to happen when you try to be friends with someone you’re still in love with… after they’ve moved on. So please save yourself from all this pain and suffering and make a commitment to cut your ex out of your life for the next 30 days. It’s going to be hard at first but eventually you’re going to realize that life goes on and it’s really not the end of the end of the world, though I’m sure it probably feels like it right now.

*Individual results may vary
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